More violent world conflicts on horizon due to climate change
Pastor Dale Morgan
*More violent world conflicts on horizon due to climate change*
Posted: June 18, 2007
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon blames the ethnic and religious
violence in Darfur on global warming and insists more conflicts of this
kind are coming because of climate change.
"The Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in
part from climate change," Ban said in a Washington Post opinion column.
As was reported in 2004, the U.S. declared the rape, pillaging and
slaughter of blacks in western Sudan by the Islamist Khartoum regime and
its Arab militia allies genocide. The U.N. has described it as the
world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with estimates of over
200,000 dead and more than 2.1 million displaced in four years.
In his column, Ban said U.N. statistics showed rainfall declined some 40
percent over the past two decades, as a rise in Indian Ocean
temperatures disrupted monsoons.
"This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some
degree, from man-made global warming," the South Korean diplomat wrote.
"It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the
drought," Ban wrote.
Ban explained that when Darfur's land was rich, black farmers welcomed
Arab herders and shared their water. With the drought, however, farmers
fenced in their land to prevent overgrazing.
"For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water
for all," he wrote. "Fighting broke out."
A U.N. peacekeeping force could stop the fighting, "but what to do about
the essential dilemma: the fact that there's no longer enough good land
to go around?"
"Any real solution to Darfur's troubles involves sustained economic
development," he said.
He suggested using new technologies, genetically modified grains or
irrigation, while bettering health, education and sanitation.
Last week, the U.S. announced it will work with its allies to draft a
new U.N. Security Council resolution to impose new sanctions on Sudan,
expand an arms embargo and prohibit the government from conducting
offensive military flights over Darfur.
Some analysts believed the Darfur slaughter essentially is part of the
Khartoum regime's effort to Arabize and Islamicize the entire country.
Khartoum fought a 21-year war against the mostly Christian and animist
south that ended in 2004, resulting in an estimated 2 million deaths and
accusations of genocide.
In Darfur, the African tribes involved are Muslims, but they are not
Arab Muslims, and they reject the government's imposition of its brand
of radical Islam.